Housing News Digest
Housing News Digest
The Tenants' Union Housing News Digest compiles our pick of items from all the latest tenancy and housing media, sent once per week, on Thursdays.
Below is the Digest archive from November 2020 onwards. From time to time you will find additional items in the archive that did not make it into the weekly Digest email. Earlier archives are here, where you can also find additional digests by other organisations.
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Archive
Homeless man tackled by SA Premier's security during press conference vows to fight charges
Candice Prosser ABC (No paywall)A homeless man who was tackled to the ground and arrested in front of the South Australian Premier at a press conference in Adelaide says he feels he was unfairly targeted by police. ... After his court hearing, he told the media he meant no harm when he moved closer to the press conference to see what was going on. "I was just passing by and was curious to watch, see what it was about," he said. "I feel very much that I was unfairly targeted.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-05/man-arrested-during-premi…
# Australia, Homelessness.Why Australian banks are slashing fixed-rate home loans despite successive interest rate rises
Ian Verrender ABC (No paywall)It may have gone largely unnoticed among the screeching sirens and the roar of emergency vehicles — but interest rates actually fell last week. That's right. In the rush to deliver the bad news on a hugely telegraphed double hike in the official cash rate — which the big four banks passed on in full on their variable rates — most news outlets overlooked the fact that some key lending rates were actually slashed. Fixed-term rates, especially for four years, were cut — in some cases, dramatically — by the likes of Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, Macquarie and Suncorp. The decisions were a sudden reversal to some savage hikes on fixed rates just weeks ago by our major lenders.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-08/australian-banks-are-slas…
# Australia, Housing market.Calls for better government assistance amid booming rental market
Elias Clure ABC (No paywall)Leading housing experts have called for a major overhaul of the government's rent assistance program, describing the payments to low-income households as "inadequate" while rental costs continue to skyrocket. n analysis of the scheme by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) also found households which were not in rental stress were still receiving payments, while people living in hugely expensive areas were not getting enough. AHURI managing director Michael Fotheringham said the key issue with the government's rental assistance was that the payments rose with overall inflation and were not directly linked to rising rental costs or geographic rental trends. "One of the challenges is that it is not targeted to renters in any way," Mr Fotheringham said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-01/rental-market-pressure-pr…
# Australia, Rent, Federal Government, Housing market, Older people, Welfare.The Guardian view on housing costs: a grave and growing injustice
Editorial The Guardian (No paywall)Levelling up will be impossible as long as rents and house prices are allowed to keep on climbing. The housing prospects facing the roughly one-third of British people who do not own their own homes continue to get worse. Hopes that the pandemic would lead to an easing of pressures, because remote working would increase flexibility for those making decisions about where to live, have been crushed. Instead, prices rose 10% between March 2020 and March 2021, and have kept on rising. June saw a year-on-year increase of 13%. Private rents are also at record levels, with recent figures showing the average outside London up 11.8% on a year ago. In the capital the figure is 15.8%. Because the majority are homeowners, attitudes surrounding housing inflation are at odds with those around rising prices for energy or food. But for those renting privately or hoping to buy, it forms part of a wider affordability crisis. Particularly for younger people ... [Read on]
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/31/the-guardi…
# International, Rent, Home ownership, Housing affordability, Young people.'If you don’t like it, leave’: renters priced out of their homes as landlords pass on costs of RBA rate hikes
Rafqa Touma The Guardian (No paywall)Tenants who have already seen their rent rise to unaffordable levels in response to interest rate hikes fear they will face further increases, after the Reserve Bank of Australia lifted the cash rate for a fourth consecutive month. ... The policy and advocacy manager at Tenants’ Union of NSW, Jemima Mowbray, said on average it costs a household about $4,000 each time they move, not including the bond cost. “You’re facing the stress of not being able to find a home, scrambling to find something more affordable,” she said. “But you’re also going to build up a debt.” As financial pressure builds, Mowbray said “more households are not being able to cover the costs of basic needs”. ... The New South Wales Greens MP for Newtown, Jenny Leong, said there was a “desperate need” to reform rental laws. She has introduced a new bill to NSW parliament “regulating measures to provide relief and protection for renters”. “People are going to libraries or community spaces to stay warm because they can’t afford to pay rent and keep the heating on,” she said. The bill includes a cap on rents in line with the consumer price index.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/04/if-you-do…
# TUNSW in the media NSW, Rent, Housing market, State Government.Even with a historic fall in house prices, rents are tipped to rise by as much as 10 per cent. Will they ever go down?
James Purtill ABC (No paywall)With news that house prices are falling sharply in several capital cities, millions of renters may be looking forward to paying the landlord a bit less. CoreLogic data released this week shows house prices in Australia are dropping at their fastest pace since the global financial crisis. The median price in Sydney saw the sharpest value falls in almost 40 years, while values in Melbourne, Hobart, Brisbane and regional Australia also dropped last month. So rents should fall too, right? Wrong. For most of the 2.4 million households renting from private landlords, rents will go up at a historically rapid clip over the next year. Here's why. [And] But there's another, longer term trend that's also driving up rents.
Because the cost of buying a house is unaffordable for many, Australians are renting longer in their lives, and into what Dr Martin [from UNSW's City Futures Research Centre] calls the "prime income years". "There's been more households who would have otherwise in previous generations have been owning, but they're renting," he said. "They are higher income houses and can spend that higher income on rental housing."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-02/house-prices-falling-but-…
# Australia, Rent, Home ownership, Housing market.Employer calls for changes to Victoria’s rental laws after receiving ‘invasive’ questions from agent
Rafqa Touma The Guardian (No paywall)An employer who was asked “invasive” and “completely unnecessary” questions by a real estate agent about a staff member is calling for changes to Victoria’s Residential Tenancies Act. An online employee referee questionnaire was sent to the secretary of the Victorian Trades Hall Council, Luke Hilakari, by a real estate agent in both an email and a text message.
The questionnaire included inquiries about the employee’s job position, typical tasks and responsibilities, gross annual income including superannuation and probation status. Also on the list was the open-ended question, “would you consider renting to this person?” among others about whether Hilakari considered his employee punctual, hard working, reliable and responsible. “These questions are deliberately and unnecessarily invasive,” Hilakari said. “In a reference check for someone getting a job you wouldn’t ask that many questions. “[They] are completely unnecessary to renting a house.” ... [Dr Chris Martin, a senior research fellow at the University of New South Wales] said the “big problem is that rental markets do get as tight as they are at the moment”. This gives agents the space to “ask for more precise and invasive information,” some of which “goes well beyond what is reasonably necessary”.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/03/employer-…
# Australia, Privacy and access, Rent, Housing market, Landlords and agents.Why this Corrimal affordable housing project won a national award
Connor Pearce Illawarra Mercury (Paywall)Prior to moving into a Correa Gardens unit in Corrimal, managed by the Housing Trust, one tenant in her 80s had been unable to leave her home. “We have a lady who was completely housebound in her previous property because of growing mobility problems,” Housing Trust CEO Michele Adair said.
“She literally hadn’t been able to get in or out of her apartment because it had stairs.” Now, the woman lives in an affordable, newly-built ground floor residence that has just won a national award. Correa Gardens won the Affordable Residential Development prize at the Urban Taskforce Australia 2022 Development Excellence Awards. This put the 34 homes on the site of a former primary school alongside billion dollar developments
https://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/7840130/why-this-corri…
# NSW, Public and community housing, Affordable housing, Disability, Older people.